Everything Gets Easier When You Narrow Your ICP

Startup lesson I learned recently that’s really going to stick with me: everything gets easier when you narrow your ICP.

I was recently in Brooklyn and went for a walk and lunch with my cofounder for Coherent, Daniel. We talked a lot about product progress and what we’re working on at Flyflow. We talked deeply about our go to market motion, and how to get to a flywheel that’s “working“ on the GTM front - probably our biggest issue.

Daniel’s core piece of advice: narrow your ICP.

I didn’t really realize the effect until it happened, but when we went from selling *everyone* AI voice infrastructure to a very specific segment (fintechs doing mainly loan and mortgage qualification over the phone), almost everything got easier.

• Outreach and targeting got easier: we knew exactly who we were selling

• Messaging got easier: we knew exactly what we were selling them

• Pain point of the ICP became very clear: cost and efficiency of doing these qualifications, replacing a call center etc

• Product got easier, because all of a sudden we knew *exactly* who we were building for and could make a one of a kind product just for that person

• Competition is no longer a worry because we’re the only real player in the market focusing on on loan and mortgage qualification over the phone for fintechs

And the market for people doing these qualifications is already large, and if we need a bigger market, we can just expand.

Winning small markets with narrow ICPs is sort of a super power though, because it enables you to do things your competitors can’t and grow faster. We may still become the API infrastructure for everything voice, but for now we can move much faster with a narrow segement.